Kinoki, I am probably closer to your point of view on the whole subject than I am to most of the people complaining... especially in regards to this comment:

Kinoki wrote:

At this point, imho, Magians are not optional, especially if you intend to keep up with the rest of the population. The longer people wait on their magians the more annoying it will be when they have to finally catch up. I'll say it to you again, were all in the same boat and you can't jump out of it just like the rest of us.(cause of the sharks. They like tasty adventurers.)

I spent a fair deal of time working on my WHM magians, thus I am just now starting on my SMN ones. However, it seems that all jobs got some pretty freakin amazing new weapons in magians, not just SMN. Also I tend to agree the job is not nearly as broken as many people on here make it seem to be. I enjoy playing the job a lot, and when I do play it I always feel like I contribute a lot to what I'm doing, more than most jobs. I may not contribute to the parser like the DD's do, but I always feel like I contribute more than my share to the battle via things like a carefully timed Chaotic Strike to avert a mob's 2-hour, or things like that.

HOWEVER, from reading your posts it's also clear you do not play Summoner because if you did, you would know how utterly worthless the Favor bonuses were. Since Favor was introduced, I've only found two uses for it: 1. Diabolos Favor for mage party. I'll say it up front, this SUCKS. This is about the single worst way to spend your time in FFXI. You literally can't do anything at all except stand there looking pretty. Any BPs you use will reset the favor, any Rage BPs will have about -20% damage. You can Dream Shroud but it resets your Favor as well, so it's probably only worth it during the night. I have turned down every request to play this role ever made upon me. I see it as an insult to expect me to do this. 2. Perpetuation -2. Note that this comes at a cost of about -20% damage (based on my observations) and fixed 60-second BP timers regardless of your BP timer reduction gear. So if you are using Rage BPs at all, this goes out the window completely. Why leave an avatar out if you aren't going to use Rage BPs? Kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it? It's almost like a cruel joke from SE. The only scenario I've found where this is useful is when kiting medium-difficulty targets. If they're weak, I just Pred Claws them down quickly. If they're strong, I have to Carby kite to avoid running out of MP before they die. However, there's a narrow gap in the middle where instead of Carby kiting, I use Fenrir to kite. With Favor, his perp is pretty low, such that I can deal more damage before running out of MP than I would doing Pred Claws spam, but it's much slower. However, it's faster than Carby, so it's still useful. There are VERY few situations where I find myself in this gap of Fenrir kiting without BPs, but this is the one true valid use of Favor that I've discovered since its introduction.

You have to recognize that in order for Favor buffs to be effective, we cannot do anything else. No BPs, no releasing and summoning other avatars. Just pop the avatar, and stand there looking pretty. Yes it gives us a way to keep our avatars out, but it's almost like a cruel joke by SE saying "here's what you get for ******** about being able to keep avatars out, now the joke's on you". The whole favor thing is hurting your argument more than helping it, and I suspect it's ignorance like this that is getting you rated down so much. Favor was a novel idea, but very poorly implemented and did not do anything whatsoever to address the job's shortcomings.

Could you only imagine the stink you'd make if your merit BP's were weaker than the new pacts. There is no winning side to that argument. Both sides would have been WTF SE way to make terrible pacts or WTF SE way to take away my hard work.

Only been watching this topic from the sidelines so far (I don't really play SMN enough anymore outside of quick/safe solos or things like missions), but I wanted to comment that Kinoki is right in this regard. I can already see the rage that would occur if SE gave us pacts that made our merit pacts look like a joke. "WAAAAHHHH SE MADE MY HARD WORK LOOK LIKE NOTHING!!!" You know, just like the current endgame gear arguments when comparing it to the level cap increases/Abyssea gear/maybe future Trial of the Magians updates.

I spent a fair deal of time working on my WHM magians, thus I am just now starting on my SMN ones. However, it seems that all jobs got some pretty freakin amazing new weapons in magians, not just SMN. Also I tend to agree the job is not nearly as broken as many people on here make it seem to be. I enjoy playing the job a lot, and when I do play it I always feel like I contribute a lot to what I'm doing, more than most jobs. I may not contribute to the parser like the DD's do, but I always feel like I contribute more than my share to the battle via things like a carefully timed Chaotic Strike to avert a mob's 2-hour, or things like that.

While you're probably happier with the current state of SMN than I am, I wouldn't call SMN broken. I still love the job, it's my second baby after RDM and I push to bring it to events I think it'd be useful at (though my RDM is generally the better job choice). I just wish we were more effective at what we do. Like I said earlier, we have a counter-intuitive system of less for more. I, at least, don't think we necessarily need to be stronger than mainstay DDs or more potent support than BRD or COR. As a hybrid job, it makes more sense that we'd be less efficient at those roles than other jobs anyway, but we shouldn't have a higher cost associated with our damage or support if they're going to be weaker than the current jobs, something the other hybrid jobs (RDM, SCH, PUP, and to a lesser extend DRG) don't have forced upon them. I want us to be more time-effective or cost-effective, either way we'd be more apt to fill in the holes at events than we are now.

Kinoki wrote:

Like I said they've been trying. More effort they've made in this job in comparison to other jobs recently. All these changes as well, have nothing to do with magians. Let's chant it again "None of your changes had anything to do with magians." Come on everybody "None of your changes had anything to do with magians." One more time for good measure, "None of your changes had anything to do with magians."

No. They haven't. If SE tried, we'd see a paradigm shift in the job as with PUP, DNC, and SAM (and all other 2hd jobs in general). SE does not try with SMN.

My problem with Magian, at least, doesn't stem from SMN. I don't like the staff section as a whole and think it's bogus that mages need to get 6-8 staffs to be as effective as other jobs getting one. This includes SMNs and the -Perp line. -Perp being in Magian isn't a problem for me.

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Incorrect, they promised to give you new avatars. They never said they would give you new avatars to keep out. What they did however say is that they want you to keep avatars out more often(It doesn't necessarily imply the new ones). You made the assumption, you were only setting yourself up for a fall.

SE said a lot about avatars, and some of it did include new avatars with the purpose of being left out. Of course, SE changed their mind/stance often enough and were tight-lipped enough about everything else that we shouldn't (and I didn't) hold them to it. Alexander and Odin still only fulfill the "new avatar promise" in the barest of sense.

Arcari wrote:

Only been watching this topic from the sidelines so far (I don't really play SMN enough anymore outside of quick/safe solos or things like missions), but I wanted to comment that Kinoki is right in this regard. I can already see the rage that would occur if SE gave us pacts that made our merit pacts look like a joke. "WAAAAHHHH SE MADE MY HARD WORK LOOK LIKE NOTHING!!!" You know, just like the current endgame gear arguments when comparing it to the level cap increases/Abyssea gear/maybe future Trial of the Magians updates.

Common sense says it's ok for BPs learned at 80 would be better than those learned at 70. Then again, how many melee still use WS learned in the 60s range.

As it stands, before a SMN tricked out their merits and gear sets to make merit BPs their mainstay, they're are primarily used when physical damage doesn't work as well. We have 19 (14 soon) more levels, so I was nonplussed that the BPs weren't spectacular, but adding physical BPs better than the 70 BPs while still maintaining merits as the primary magical BPs as was the case before is a route that can be taken. Even a new Ward would have maintained merit BP usefulness while adding a new BP. It's not so cut and dry as Kinoki made it out to be.

Edited, Aug 25th 2010 1:53pm by jlejeune

____________________________

"And I'm prepared to passionately argue this point until nothing makes sense anymore. If that doesn't work, then the hours upon hours of whining will." -Red Mage Statscowski

You can't just say "I'll just use Fenrir" and expect to get hastega, healing ruby etc. No, you have to use all avatars, and because of that you need all staffs.

Yeah, calling Garuda out -> having it do Hastega -> dismiss definitely needs that wind perp staff. Otherwise it would take like 10 or so more MP to do it. That's like a missed out Cure 1, which is an absolutely unacceptable loss.

Common sense says it's ok for BPs learned at 80 would be better than those learned at 70. Then again, how many melee still use WS learned in the 60s range.

Was this... a joke?

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As it stands, before a SMN tricked out their merits and gear sets to make merit BPs their mainstay, they're are primarily used when physical damage doesn't work as well. We have 19 (14 soon) more levels, so I was nonplussed that the BPs weren't spectacular, but adding physical BPs better than the 70 BPs while still maintaining merits as the primary magical BPs as was the case before is a route that can be taken. Even a new Ward would have maintained merit BP usefulness while adding a new BP. It's not so cut and dry as Kinoki made it out to be.

I figure it's pretty cut in dry that you would use the best pact anyways regardless of magical vs. physical and downgrade to another if you need to. Your getting more pacts, maybe they're wards. Seems to feel like more of theme of the spells this round. I figure, though, that complaints will be made about the new ward pacts anyways.

The 3 level 80 smns averaged (at least while I was in range to have it show up in my log) 737. I don't know if that is good or not, but its a whole lot better than 181. Plus their avatars were obviously living longer as well. It was a 22ish minute fight and I only had to rest twice with refresh being my only source of mana regen. Temp items + a martello gave us plenty of wiggle room.

You are missing the point that your opponents gained levels too. If the level cap never happened, the monsters wouldn't have been higher level, and you would have been doing 737 damage at level 75. So all you gained on leveling was that you removed the newly added level difference.

If SE were to add a new level 100 monster, would you say SMN suddenly got nerfed to 181 damage, or would you say we were the same, the monster just was harder?

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Only been watching this topic from the sidelines so far (I don't really play SMN enough anymore outside of quick/safe solos or things like missions), but I wanted to comment that Kinoki is right in this regard. I can already see the rage that would occur if SE gave us pacts that made our merit pacts look like a joke. "WAAAAHHHH SE MADE MY HARD WORK LOOK LIKE NOTHING!!!" You know, just like the current endgame gear arguments when comparing it to the level cap increases/Abyssea gear/maybe future Trial of the Magians updates.

It is a trade off. What would you rather have?

1) Nothing. 2) A duplicate WS/spell of same potency as old (and shares recast) 3) Something new that makes your current investments useless

The answer naturally is none of the above. Which kind of limits updates to new things that the job didn't have. Same things is just a waste of time.

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Yeah, calling Garuda out -> having it do Hastega -> dismiss definitely needs that wind perp staff. Otherwise it would take like 10 or so more MP to do it. That's like a missed out Cure 1, which is an absolutely unacceptable loss.

Obviously my point wasn't clear enough. Summoners keep the cheapest avatars out. If I thought Garuda + hastega would be a great thing to use, the lack of staff would make me consider the more annoying avatar rotation with Fenrir. The lack of a staff would change how you play.

Is it a huge problem? No, but would it be a huge problem with "vs vermin" melee weapons? No, that wouldn't be a huge problem either.

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While you're probably happier with the current state of SMN than I am, I wouldn't call SMN broken.

Many people use broken in different senses.

I personally use it for describing how unfair the design choices are.

Example: To get -2 perpetuation, you need to use Favors and lose 20% damage output.

Question: Would dropping your automatons DD performance by 20% make it live longer? Probably, so should PUPs try and gimp their pets to make them live longer? Probably not accepted... but Summoners are expected to gimp themselves to have their pets live longer.

Alternative: How about giving WAR a JA that cuts 20% damage from them but give them 200 HP more? Would it be a sane JA addition? And if it wouldn't be a good idea, how could Favors be justified?

And that is only talking about the newest update material. The older parts are worse. I'm not expecting super abilities for SMN, just abilities that any WAR, SAM, BLM or BRD wouldn't call worthless on the spot.

#110Kinoki,
Posted:Aug 26 2010 at 1:56 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) How about giving WAR a JA that cuts attack by 25% and increases defense by 25%. The important note here is that if you don't like the ability: You can totally avoid it. The only legitimate favor thread was how long ago? So until then the topic wasn't broached so no one obviously gave a **** til it was brought up here.

Not only is that really unrealistic (and retarded) but could you imagine the coding that the programmers would have to do for every single weapon(16 classes) + every family + every element + the 3-4 seperate paths in each element due to all the pet routes as well?

That would take like 5 minutes.

1) make all of the weapons for vs x. 2) copy paste all of those weapons for vs x, and ctrl+f x and change to y. 3) ??? 4) profit!

Know how old it is? A little over 9 months. If this continued as an issue why didn't you continue to bother to bring the topic up more often. "I WANT FIXES BUT SE DOESN'T NEED TO BE TOLD THEY SHOULD KNOW FROM THE NON-DESCRIPT MEWING 6 MILES AWAY". Gonna be honest this is really your fault not mine and not SE's, also

Are you some kind of newbie?

I complained so much 2004,2005,2006 that regardless of what I posted the following 2 years, I got rated down just because I posted it. People got that fed up with my posts. I even believe I've been challenged 5 times to try and not talk about SMN all the time.

I cut down on my complaints because they didn't do anything.

If you actually hunted the archives, you'd see I even said the current implementation would be a failure MONTHS BEFORE IT WAS ANNOUNCED. If it doesn't help to tell SE their implementation sucks before updates, how hard do you think it will be to tell them after the update when they can use the argument "We can't change it now, it is already in the game".

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Except it would. Instead of being consistent on every enemy you'd be bad at everything else in the game but that one enemy out of 17 family types. 1/17 families vs 1/8 elemental type(ignoring 1 since it shares).

But you seem to be catching on here. If you think 17 vs 8 is bad, then isn't it comparable to 8 vs 1 in difference? Which is what we are complaining about. It would be kind of silly of you to say that having to do 9 weapons more than mages would be unfair, but as a mage having to do 7 more staffs than melee is not.

Found the thread: http://www.zam.com/forum.html?forum=29&mid=1257852231235973774&page=1Know how old it is? A little over 9 months. If this continued as an issue why didn't you continue to bother to bring the topic up more often. "I WANT FIXES BUT SE DOESN'T NEED TO BE TOLD THEY SHOULD KNOW FROM THE NON-DESCRIPT MEWING 6 MILES AWAY". Gonna be honest this is really your fault not mine and not SE's, also

Not Magians

Zam is not the first or only place SE goes to for feedback. The blame game doesn't really work.

____________________________

"And I'm prepared to passionately argue this point until nothing makes sense anymore. If that doesn't work, then the hours upon hours of whining will." -Red Mage Statscowski

..and lets not forget that in spring of 2006, the dev team admitted they were concerned about finding a way for SMN to keep avatars out longer--that they were considering ways to INCREASE SMN MP POOL.

Sooo..they admitted over 4 years ago there is aproblem with SMN MP pool that prevents them from keeping avatars out longer so they can contribute more...and then they nerf our mp resource at the same time they make a ridiculous path to offsetting that nerf.

I think we are perfectly justified to gripe about both the rise in perp. cost as well as the ridiculous magian trials...at least those of us that actually use our avatars and understand how it affects gameplay.

Don't mean to derail the topic, but it kinda goes to the overall neglect for SMN over the years--old Esper spells are being added...for BLM? Why they didn't give it to SMN as a new magic tier is another puzzling decision coming down the pipe.

IDK what the deal is with the dev team and SMN...but it seems more and more like they just don't care.

#116Kinoki,
Posted:Aug 27 2010 at 12:18 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Consistency is cool you know? Especially if you had issues for so long. Don't deflect this your equally as responsible. You could have easily posted these issues promptly before updates to make sure they looked at it.

#117Kinoki,
Posted:Aug 27 2010 at 12:44 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) So you said it would fail cause it would fail. Regardless of the point you knew that it was an unstoppable force that would be pushed through anyways. If that's the case you still had plenty of time to design a change til the next next update. Unfortunately one person did it, everyone defaulted him. Kudos for the little effort made towards changes.

in mellowy's defense..I found 269 posts with mellowy, FFXI, Summoner, SMN and perpetuation cost in it.

I think we can say that Mellowy has done his fair share of complaining about perp. cost....

tbh, I didn't have to search it. It has been a consistent complaint for as long as I've been in FFXI. I was aware of it before I even got BLM to 75 and unlocked SMN. It's the main reason why I chunked 2 carbuncle rubies when they dropped randomly in my inventory--never wanted to deal with having to hunt down the -perp. gears. But, I joined a static that had a SMN and we let him paly as a DD and I was amazed how much he could do on it, so I unlocked and took it up.

Bear in mind also, I tried my best NOT to be a cure battery on SMN. In parties, I mostly meleed (staff, club, and dagger precapped on BLM to the 70's on SMN) and used my avatars... set up and closed chains with them and sometimes even magic bursted off them. I did this and backup healed as well, just like I backup healed when I was on BLM or Bard. If they wanted me to just sit there and be a cure battery I typically said no thank you and soloed. So I have a fairly firm grasp of how perpetuation cost impacts the job, and am fully aware of how big an issue it has been and that it is a common topic on various forums out there. It's also why I specifically remember them talking about it 4 years ago because it was a hot topic for a while afterwards.

This is not some trivial topic whispered about in back rooms that the devs have never been made aware of. The community kept it out front forever--so much to the point that many got flamed and rated down into oblivion for bringing it up (see also Mellowy's history on this forum). Why do you think they put -2 perpetuaion on Favour in the first place? TO TRY TO FACILITATE KEEPING THE AVATARS OUT TO FULLY CHARGE THE FAVOUR. That is an admission that the devs understand that perpetuation cost KEEPS US FROM LEAVING AVATARS OUT.

And what do they do? Build in more perp. cost with an update that allows us to level further. They took a proactive stance to increase it. It wasn't preprogrammed in there and they just flipped a switch, as evidenced by the double down on the cost that broke the pattern of the previous 75 levels. They DECIDED to increase it. But it's ok...they are gonna let us do trials to offset the rise. But then, they didn't do it as one item, they split it into 8. THAT is the straw that has broken the camel's back on this issue.

Give up Kinoki...

Raist

Oh, and btw, flaws with favours and magian weren't only brought up in one thread and then given up on. It has been brought up multiple times in different threads. It just may have been the one thread that started specificially about it that you followed. Just like if you had been watching the forums over the years, you would be more aware of how pervasive the perp. cost issue is.

ok.. that last post just shows that you haven't followed any of these debates worth a crap. And you haven't seen me rage yet, but I am growing a little impatient with people like Kinoki.

It isn't JUST the fact that they increased perp in the last update that is the problem. THEY DOUBLED THE RATE OF INCREASE in some categories with the last update. Look at the numbers, and do the math. At the same time, they convenienlty added an insane path to offset the double down in the magian trials.

If you even bothered to figure out the trend, some classes were not due for ANY perp. increase until 79/80 if not higher. Yet...they got 2! Not 1, but 2. Hmm.... but the staves at 80 conveniently give -2... isn't that special.

Note that it was plural... STAVES... not just STAFF.

Again, to beat the dead horse--no other job has to make multiple items to MAINTAIN their EFFICIENCY. Some have capped Siphon, and increasing skill gives them no extra MP recovery--and being able to /RDM is a limited solution when it is safe to /RDM IF you even have it leveled high enough to use it--so don't even try to justify it those ways either. Yes, mages CAN do multiple staff lines, but they don't HAVE to in order to RESTORE something they had TAKEN AWAY.

THE SMN LINE IS THE ONLY LINE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO OFFSET A PENALTY GAINED FROM LEVELING--AND YOU MIGHT HAVE TO DO IT MULTIPLE TIMES TO FULLY RECOVER YOUR USAGE PATTERN.

How many times does this have to be drummed into your skulls before you get that?

In case you haven't heard it the first XXXX times it's been stated all over the place:

THE SMN LINE IS THE ONLY LINE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO OFFSET A PENALTY GAINED FROM LEVELING--AND YOU MIGHT HAVE TO DO IT MULTIPLE TIMES TO FULLY RECOVER YOUR USAGE PATTERN.

I think oop nailed problem with people that can't grasp this problem with this comment:

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he doesn't have a sense of history, scale, or awareness.

And yes, no one knows what we may see at 99. That is not the problem. The problem is here and now. This time sink prevents us from doing other things, while others are free to progress. Look what you get for your reward at 99...forget the fact that you're getting penalized constantly for 99 levels. You constantly complained all along for not getting any fixes to your biggest complaint, while everyone else got adjustments made for their complaints. So, for your patience and dedication to hit 99 no matter how much @#$@#$ we threw at you, here's your final reward.

Show me anything in the history of SMN adjustments that would give us reason to trust it will be fixed anytime soon? We know for a fact they were concerned about it 4 years ago. We only have so many updates and so many levels for them to adjust the perp. increase rate back to something more reasonable.

Any end gift they may have in mind can in no way justify being crapped on for years in ways that no other job ever has, nor ever will be.

Kinoki, you really need to stop speaking on subjects of which you have utterly no knowledge, and that you have no knowledge on the past musings of the Summoner community is quite obvious to anyone who's been on Alla for any considerable length of time. You can't just run a few searches through the archives and feel like you have a grasp of what the atmosphere was back then; you're peering through the keyhole. Mellowy is not exaggerating on how much public criticism he's had of Summoner (much of it constructive, too), nor on how much complaining the rest of the Summoner community has done. It just doesn't seem to be sinking in for you. If you phrased your assertions as constructive questions (like "have you tried complaining directly to SE?") rather than accusations ("You don't even try to complain to SE!"), it might be better-received.

The reason you don't see Summoners complaining much anymore is because we're all out of steam. We ******* and ******** most of us for years, and SE has shown minimal interest in addressing the problem. We've all given up, it's a waste of time suggesting fixes for Summoner. Once in a while SE makes comments or changes that indicate they are aware of the shortcomings of Summoner, but their "solutions" are never serious attempts. The last serious attempt they made at fixing Summoner was splitting Ward & Rage timers apart. That was a big improvement, but only covered about half the distance needed to make Summoner viable in FFXI party play. Since then we have made no progress whatsoever. Favors are a joke. The change for adding bonuses for summoning skill over the cap is a joke. Elemental Siphon is a joke. Yes, you heard that correctly, Siphon does nothing to address the problems facing Summoner; Neither does Convert from /RDM. In fact they could drop perpetuation cost altogether and it still wouldn't fix Summoner in my eyes. MP is not the core of the problem, the Summoner community rarely (if ever) ******* about MP issues until the level cap increase, and even that I think is just temporary. The real problems with Summoner relate to finding a niche in the FFXI party dynamic. We can't tank, we can't main heal effectively, we can't DD effectively, we can't buff effectively, and we can't debuff effectively. We can do any of those things a little bit, but a little bit is not enough for FFXI party dynamics, nor is a tiny bit of two or three (or all) of those things. Nobody wants that in their party. When was the last time you invited one? This is something anyone who's played Summoner through to endgame will confirm for you.

SE has repeatedly shown that they simply are not interested in our ideas for Summoner. I think the splitting of BP timers was the only suggestion from the Summoner community that was ever implemented by SE, and even that was the result of a good 2+ years of complaining focused on just that one topic by about half of the active participants of the Summoner forums on Alla (and probably other forums too). We pretty much had a thread about it every month or so for several years before it was finally implemented.

Once in a while SE makes comments or changes that indicate they are aware of the shortcomings of Summoner, but their "solutions" are never serious attempts. The last serious attempt they made at fixing Summoner was splitting Ward & Rage timers apart. That was a big improvement, but only covered about half the distance needed to make Summoner viable in FFXI party play.

Interesting. Admittingly, this was before my time. I can say that summoner would be more powerful and useful if I had a ~23 second BP timer for Wind Blade. I think that the rage-ward separation was actually a nerf. Most of the wards are useless in experience parties and a larger majority of the wards are worthless in large-man endgame. Splitting the rages and wards, and then doubling the timers, just meant that we could rage only half as often.

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Since then we have made no progress whatsoever.

Hmm. Disagreed strongly.

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Favors are a joke.

True that.

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The change for adding bonuses for summoning skill over the cap is a joke. Elemental Siphon is a joke. Yes, you heard that correctly, Siphon does nothing to address the problems facing Summoner; Neither does Convert from /RDM. In fact they could drop perpetuation cost altogether and it still wouldn't fix Summoner in my eyes. MP is not the core of the problem, the Summoner community rarely (if ever) ******* about MP issues until the level cap increase, and even that I think is just temporary. The real problems with Summoner relate to finding a niche in the FFXI party dynamic. We can't tank, we can't main heal effectively, we can't DD effectively, we can't buff effectively, and we can't debuff effectively. We can do any of those things a little bit, but a little bit is not enough for FFXI party dynamics, nor is a tiny bit of two or three (or all) of those things. Nobody wants that in their party. When was the last time you invited one? This is something anyone who's played Summoner through to endgame will confirm for you.

You are right that smn buffing and debuffing is laughably horrible. When's the last time you got a smn to buff the party instead of a brd, cor, rdm, whm, etc., and when's the last time you got a smn instead of a brd, rdm, or whatever, to debuff a mob? I see no reason to dwell on this further.

I agree that the basic problem is that we're underpowered compared to other jobs in a lot of ways. Specifically, there are roles which we're supposed to do, but for which we're horrible - buffing and debuffing, and to some degree curing. I think that summoner has a good place right now for low-manning. It's mostly laughable for experience experience points parties. However, it does have a place in a lot of endgame. Its damage is situationally awesome. Solid hateless magic or physical damage while being at a distance is incredibly useful and powerful. Odin, while a horrible cop-out as a new avatar, only further amplifies the usefulness of summoner in this niche. It transformed our 2hour from "meh / situational" into "awesome single target damage". I think Odin is a great powerup for summoner. (Yes, you could do about as much damage with Odin as you could do spending that MP on Wind Blade spam, but Wind Blade spam takes time, and time is a valuable resource. Having the ability to participate in zergs is awesome, and the ability to dump all your MP in one go does help on short fights.)

MP very much is a critical resource for summoner. MP is a very big limitation on my Wind Blade per hour rate. If I had infinite mp, you better believe that I would start outdamaging BLMs and SCHs on most mobs. Elemental Siphon is huge. It was a great boon for smn. It was comparable to convert, though the hard cap on it makes it a littler suckier with the level cap increase. To answer your hypothetical of no perp cost, you better believe that getting +2 mp / tick with any gear on for any pet would be huge.

The ward and rage BP separation overall was hurtful to summoner. It was before my time, so I don't know if the summoner community suggested "split and have each timer be double of the current timer" or if that was SE's interpretation. If that was the suggestion, then the summoner base was truly retarded. Imagine if you had a 23 second Healing Ruby 2 timer; with your sub, you might actually be an interesting curer. If I only had a 23 second BP timer for Wind Blade, I would definitely be able to put out a noticably larger number of Wind Blades per hour. Separation does let you do a Rage followed immediately by a Ward, but how often does that really come up? Not that often. Generally you're in one role or the other.

PS: As for the whole skill above cap bullsh*t, it is stupid at first glance, but it's really not that bad. All jobs when they level get an effective bonus to their attack, damage, defense, etc., just from leveling. There's a "source level" and "target level" in a lot of the accuracy and damage calculations. I assume (and hope) summoner pets are the same. As such, for most jobs it is effectively about skill, or ability, or whatever, over their naked state. It's how gear works. Yes, it sucks that a summoner gets worse when it gains a level before it caps its skill, but that's just a minor annoyance to me. When they changed it so that our summoning magic skill actually does something, we gained a lot of power and a lot of new gear variety.

PPS: I started doing the Fenrir perp stick. Oh god is this bad. I swear to god, the second to last trial took me in the neighborhood of 10 hours, and the last trial is going to be at least 8 hours (assuming 2 minutes a raptor). I really hate Magian.

edit: Oh, and pertaining to increased strength at 80: If you don't have a -5 perp. staff, and use Avatar's Favour to offset the perpetuation--you NERF THE AVATAR by 10% or more. So to reset your perpetuation wtihout a magian staff, you are negating most the gains in output gained from the increase in levels. NO OTHER JOB HAS GONE THROUGH SUCH A TRANSFORMATION WITH THIS UPDATE.

That's overreacting. The 'transformation' is a mere 2/3 perpetuation extra. Annoying, yes, but nothing game breaking. The amount of MP gained over the 5 new levels offset the additional MP drain, so you're at worst back at the start. And if you take into consideration that SMN gets access to Convert at 80 (and Refresh at 82 soon), MP becomes less of an issue in a lot more situation.

RDM on the other hand has seen niche roles destroyed, job defining spells and abilities relegated to other jobs, and overall effectiveness culled. If this keeps up, RDM will become one of those jobs you take along because the player didn't have anything better.

Seedling, you sir are a ******. Let me count the ways.

First, you count -2 or -3 mp / tick as a minor annoyance? How ****** would you be if every mage just got refresh? Refresh is not a trivial spell. 2 or 3 mp / tick is a lot of mp. That's like the mp for an Eclipse Bite every minute.

Second, you suggest that a larger mp pool somehow matters in regards to perp cost. Let's suppose that summoner had twice the mp pool. Sure, we'd last twice as long, but then we're take twice as long /healing to get it back. Overall effectiveness is not improved for anything but very short fights. Max MP in the general case is not useful. Anyone who gears for Max MP (besides a galka pld maybe, or a galka brd/whm maybe, maybe for a BCNM, etc.) is an idiot.

Third, you are incorrect in statements of fact. Due to the additional 2 perpetuation, my solo experience per hour is drastically affected. It went from like 6k/hr to around 3 to 4k/hr. When it takes 2-3 BPs to kill an imp, and suddenly I've lost the MP for 1-2 BPs while keeping my pet out for those 2-3 BPs, you can see the problem. Also, for other hard solo or low man situations, I can no longer effectively kite for a long time with garuda and fenrir. That's a huge problem. Sometimes carby dies way too quickly, and carby doesn't have access to Wind Blade and Predator Claws.

Fourth, you contradict yourself by saying perp cost isn't a big deal, but don't worry you'll get refresh which is the exact same magnitude as 3 perp / tick.

Fifth, RDM seeing its role destroyed. Let's see. Summoner used to be the only kid on the block with blinkga and stoneskinga. That was really useful for BCNM situations and missions and stuff where there was prep time and a big fight. We used to be the only phalanx-ga job, but then rdm got phalanx 2, and then everyone got phalanx-ga with /sch. Basically, see every Ward which exists. With the gained power and higher prevalence of straight tanking, that really hurts summoner's bottom line of hateless damage at a distance as you can put some melees on it which will far outdo any blm, sch, or smn in raw damage. I'm sure that smn has had what little role destroyed far more than rdm. That you even suggest this borders on trolling. "overall effectiveness culled" my ***. Check back with me when people actually start asking if you have smn leveled to join a HNMLS and they don't ask about rdm, and experience points party invites.

For 3 years I've tried to make Allakhazam bring the issues of SMN up during their interviews with SE staff. Sadly they only listen to majority, and SMNs is minoirty. So the best questions we've ever gotten about SMN is "When will there be new avatars?". The important SMN questions were also replaced by questions majority of FFXI players wanted asked. Like "How do you beat AV?" (asked every year for 4 years), "What is the formula for TH?", "How does day and direction effect crafting?" and mind I remind everyone that most of these questions were useless and got the answers "If you believe in it, it does".

I've sent 5 emails asking for a direct contact with the SE staff by email correspondence. Naturally they don't care about random english speaking user asking for meeting their staff. But had it worked, we'd have SMN fixed years ago.

In addition to my 5 emails asking to get in direct contact, I've also sent 50 emails throughly describing the issues and solutions for SMN. That is 50 emails in 6 years, or about 10 per year because I gave up. And half the reason I gave up is that I got sick of my 25+ automated answer email notifications.

So apart from hanging outside SE's office hunger striking, I've tried it all. Actually I forgot to mention the 3 or so emails I asked them to just plain send me the Summoner code and let me reprogram it myself since it should only be number tweaking needed and take one week.

And lastly, PUP and COR came the same expansion, and both had exactly my job adjustment suggestions from the previous 3 years. Kind of saying "These were awesome solutions to SMN, but we had to make new jobs to sell more games and used them for that instead".

PS. PUP, aka Necromancer, had MP and supposedly perpetuation to begin with as well. One can only assume SE read all my comments and saw "Hey perpetuation doesn't work. Let's make PUP just have a timer on recast". (Ironically a 20 min timer was also a terribly bad choice, but hey, it is SE we are talking about)

You are missing the point that your opponents gained levels too. If the level cap never happened, the monsters wouldn't have been higher level, and you would have been doing 737 damage at level 75. So all you gained on leveling was that you removed the newly added level difference.

I really don't think I am missing the point. EVERY job gets better when leveling. Summoner is no different. To say your avatars do not get more powerful by virtue of level alone is false.

Should avatars cost more as they rise in level? Sure they should. Just like Slow II costs more mp than Slow. Just like Tier V spells are less mp efficient than T4 spells. You get a bump in the mp pool as you level and options like convert. Throw in a little ballad III and refresh II and you are sitting on more mp with stronger avatars. Unless of course the reason you want lower costs is so 2-3 smns can take on major NMs without having to worry about that annoying thing called 'damage taken'.

For the record, SMN is not my main, but I do play it a lot. I use it for anything I don't feel too comfortable using BLM, SAM, MNK, or even NIN for. So, I'm defending it just the same as if it was--because I do use it a lot, and not for just spike damage. I fight along side my avatars, or let them just solo things for me most of the time. There should be no denying it needs help to anyone who actually uses their avatars in a fight for extended times--not just cast, BP, release.

SMN has had increased perp. cost like once every 5-8 levels on average, with it varying by each category. In this last update...they increased it TWICE in 5 levels, and THEN we can get a new piece with -2 perp reduction. Granted, you can your -4 staves that are equipable at 75, but by the time you get to that point, you will be 76 if not 77 from the xp earned GETTING to -4 perp, and you are staring at your first perp. increase by then. Then you get another increase before you complet the -5 stage, which isn't equipable until you hit 80--AFTER getting the second increase. Also, you are not just farming a pop item to pop a mob to get a pair of gloves, or simply walking to the AH to buy an item either--you have to kill over 1000 mobs under specific conditions to make each one of several elements.

It's being justified because we can make staves that offset the cost, or that our avatars got stronger, or we got new moves. Well, guess what...everyone else has gotten stronger (5ACC/5ATT per level on the top tiers, PLUS any bonuses they got in strength because of boosts in stats from either leveling/meritting or new gears that enhance them). But here's the flaw in using that to justify increasing perp. like they did: SMN only gets the boost from the increase of skill alone. Other jobs increase base output on a larger scale because they not only get the increases from skill alone, but from increased stats as well--cruor gear and abyssea drops are basically free gear that directly enhances other jobs output/efficiency, but do nothing for SMN's output/efficiency--in fact, Teal will reduce it because you remove pieces that enhance avatars or fight timers/perp. the one exception is if you do the VNM grind to get the Augur's pieces, which can be a far worse grind than going after a YY robe ever could be. Magian weapons also enhance other jobs output on top of that--SMN staves only give a couple more DPS when swinging the staff and offset the perp increase...no crit hit bonus, no store tp bonus, no STR or DEX bonus, no + stat to pets. So, the increase in SMN base output is scaling nowhere near other jobs.

Also, the increase in mp pool is not big enough to offset the added cost of keeping an avatar out the same amount of time. Also keep in mind, (as stated earlier) the mobs have gotten stronger as well--more resistant to damage and/or more hp. So, you still have to keep the avatars out just as long, if not LONGER to kill them.

And here is another fun comparison for you to munch on. In the course of doing my 6 staves for SMN and BLM so far, I have worked on spiders in the tree twice now. Both times, I did them on SMN, with NPC assisting me, using Ramuh, with favor up. First time, I had to kill with thunder damage, this current one is kill with Ramuh. I'm following the same pattern, in the same gear (except staff, which I will detail in a bit), across the same days/weather (it's pretty much only thunder if any at all). I wasn't using a bunch of chaotic strikes, or tossing any enfeebles out (just what my NPC does until she runs out of mp). I just call Ramuh, apply favor if down, put up shock spikes, engage, thunderspark, and hit thunderspark when timer is up, spirit taker the stronger spider as TP breaks 100 for 120-175 mp. When the first spider got to 10%, switch myself and Ramuh to second one and let the next thunderspark kill the weaker spider. I dismissed Ramuh after killing 2nd one of each pair and siphoned if it was up (315mp or higher if I had day/weather aligned). Interestingly enough, I even had kupower blood of vampire up both times as well (been getting it a lot lately, which has helped a lot). I've done this on both lists.

So basically, the ONLY difference between them really has been the staff. No food other than mpheal foods as needed (love my dream hat +1). First time, it was with Jupiter's staff for the first ~90%, until the final blow. I tried to work it out so I would Spirit Taker just before the final Thunderspark as much as possible so I wouldn't loose the TP when I swapped in Teiwaz in the macro for the killing blood pact. On this current list, I've been able to keep my teiwaz on full time because of the -4 perpetuation. So the only variance has essentially been -1 to perp. cost. On the first list with a -3 perp. staff on for the first ~90% of each fight, I rarely got past 10 or 12 kills before I had to squat to rest. I was probly actually doing more DPS with the staff on first list too b/c of increased crit rate and additional effect lightning damage. On this current list, I just used 3 charges on my NPC pearls and only squatted ONCE--and that was only because I was down in the 200's on mp and siphon wasn't up yet, so I rested roughly a minute, siphoned and took off again.

Now, that is just a difference of 1 mp/tic in perp. cost for most of each fight at the same level, on the same mobs, under the same weather/day etc... and I was what, 7 times more efficient? Even though there are some differences in gear and physical DPS so it's not a perfect match across the board...I was able to kill 7 times the mobs. Just think how it could compare at a flat 2 mp/tic difference with all things being 100% equal, and maybe then you can see why the fuss over ramping up the rate of the rise in perp. cost coupled with the insane grind to offset it.

Everyone keeps trying to justify it by saying we can make weapons to offset that--knowing fulll well that it's not just one weapon that has to be made (unless you were one of the lucky ones who has completed a Nirvana--but even so you still have to kill 6000 mobs which is almost as many as 6 elemental staves, but still easier kills than the individual staves).

Do you still not understand the impact this has had on players yet? It is the last weekend of August. I STILL have @ 600 mobs to kill with avatars and I've only been working on 2 staves for BLM, and 4 for SMN to cover 5 avatars and 4 elementals with -5 perp. In order to complete these staves, I have neglected 4 other jobs that were 76 the DAY of the update (capped xp at 75 on all), 3 at 60, and one at 55--and have only gotten two (BLM and SMN) from 76 to 80 since the update--most of which has been done in the trials. I have been in an Abyssea alliance ONLY 4 TIMES since the update. Twice on BLM, once on SMN for a couple hours (mostly to recover xp losses on it), and once on MNK for a couple hours at the request of LS to replace someone leaving (it's the only 76 left that is now 77). I haven't been slouching on this, it's just because of the nature of the kill shot requirements and the targets on the lists. You don't get many chances to team up, because everyone wants to just rip through the mobs and not worry about who gets the kill and how, so I've been soloing most of it. I'll get/send tells...but when I remind them I need Pet or <element> final attack...they typically say Thanks for the offer, but I have to pass. On several occasions, they still went ahead with the killing spree and I would miss more kills than I got credit for.

Whether it was intentional or not, this sector of the trials (elemental staves in general) is flat out BROKEN. Compound it with the way they broke SMN natural perpetuation increase progression by doubling up on it last update is just flat out nerfing SMN at this point and should have been addressed by SE prior to increasing the perpetuation in the first place.

For certain, it needs to be addressed in this next update, but with their history with SMN...no one has any expectation that they will do anything about it. But, we are trying (AGAIN) to have our voices heard.

Forgive us if you are sick of hearing SMN complain--that's just further proof of how poorly SMN has been treated over the years.....

I really don't think I am missing the point. EVERY job gets better when leveling. Summoner is no different. To say your avatars do not get more powerful by virtue of level alone is false.

Should avatars cost more as they rise in level? Sure they should. Just like Slow II costs more mp than Slow.

Bad analogy. With Slow and Slow II you're given a choice of what you want to use. SMN is forced to use the more costly version even when they might not want to, or might not necessarily be warranted.

When I was soloing SMN, levels 20-26 were simple. When I hit 27, it got harder (even though I was fighting the exact same stuff I was fighting at 26) because I no longer had a "free" Carby. (Didn't have FoV back then, either.) If you ask me, that's not getting better. Maybe Carby was getting every so slightly stronger, but not nearly by enough to justify it not being free anymore.

The point that you missed was that other jobs clearly improve with levels, without receiving any real drawback. SMN may improve with levels, but it also receives a clear drawback. No matter how high my RDM gets, I always retain the ability to cast Slow 1, and it still always costs 15 MP.

You are missing the point that your opponents gained levels too. If the level cap never happened, the monsters wouldn't have been higher level, and you would have been doing 737 damage at level 75. So all you gained on leveling was that you removed the newly added level difference.

I really don't think I am missing the point. EVERY job gets better when leveling. Summoner is no different. To say your avatars do not get more powerful by virtue of level alone is false.

Should avatars cost more as they rise in level? Sure they should. Just like Slow II costs more mp than Slow. Just like Tier V spells are less mp efficient than T4 spells. You get a bump in the mp pool as you level and options like convert. Throw in a little ballad III and refresh II and you are sitting on more mp with stronger avatars. Unless of course the reason you want lower costs is so 2-3 smns can take on major NMs without having to worry about that annoying thing called 'damage taken'.

You are clearly missing the point.

Avatars power increase is 99.999% level correction on damage. A 80 SMN beats a 75 SMN on level 80 mobs by about 1000 damage. A 80 SMN does same damage as a 75 SMN on a T mob.

Besides you are comparing melee damage to spells. Fenrir melee at 75 and Fenrir melee at 80 does not compare to T4 nukes vs T5 nukes. It is Eclipse Bite that compares to Lunar Bay with increased MP costs.

Also you seem to be missing the difference in jobs. SMN with -15 perpetuation + 10 refresh ends up losing 5 MP per tick. Any other job with + 10 refresh ends up gaining 10 MP per tick.

If you were forming a party, would you pick a mage losing MP or gaining MP?

The fact remains that SMN is the only job with a penalty system. All other jobs just get bonuses. You don't see PUPs get attachments with "Kills your puppet faster" that they choose to equip. No, you have to be a SMN to get -perpetuation to make your pet "die" faster.

But you know what is the worst part? Summoners have to use half their gear slots just to counter a penalty system. It is just insane. Let me draw you some examples:

WAR has a native -5 attack per 10 levels. 80 you have -40 attack. So you need to find armors with +attack to counter this penalty system.

PLD has a native 5% more damage taken per 10 levels. At 80 you take 40% more damage than any other job. But you can hunt down -%damage taken armors to counter this.

RDM has a native -5 INT per 10 levels. At 80 you need to equip +40 INT to reach race standard INT levels. (Same as if you were a SCH or BLM)

BLU has native -5 accuracy each 10 levels. At 80 you have -40 accuracy which hurt your BLU spells accuracy. But by hunting down accuracy gear you can offset this.

Of course, all of that is unrelated to Magian. The Magian issue is that it is split per element instead of a single perpetuation staff choice. But it is still quite silly to need to kill 10 000 monsters to get a weapon that is only there to remove a penalty that is unfair and negative.

I'd honestly want SE to super nerf all jobs just to see how many people would say "Why are you complaining? Being super nerfed is not bad. Infact it is balanced to be super nerfed". Because apparently people think it is easy to say other jobs are fine when they are weak.

#130BarberofSeville,
Posted:Aug 29 2010 at 6:21 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) All of these comparisons are silly. Especially to melee jobs. If you look at every other magic user, MP costs increase as level increases. Period.

the numbers don't add up though if you compare the difference. You are comparing apples to oranges. It doesn't cost the BLM anymore mp to cast the same tier spells, and BLM is able to increase those same spells' output on par or better in comparison with little or no effort at all. Especially, since you were comparing a NEW and HIGHER level spells to OLDER and LOWER level attacks on SMN.

If you paid attention to points being made in previous posts, Avatars aren't gaining that much difference in there damage output. Their attack only increased 25 points for 5 levels. A non critical 5 hit move (the biggest one a SMN has) is going to do around 125 points more damage against a T mob at 80 vs. what it did against a T mob at 75. Meanwhile, a BLM can cast the SAME TIER IV SPELL and have a larger increase in damage against a T mob at 80 vs 75 and have the same difference in damage or better b/c they can simple grab some easy to obtain gear (without spending any gil or doing any trials) and enhance their output. Not to mention, they've gained higher MACC/MATT from increased stats just from leveling that will factor into a more benificial formula for magic than for an Avatar's attacks. There's nothing new for SMN to do to increase their output above and beyond what they get simply because they leveled up and recapped skill, unless (as stated earlier) they go through the labor of hunting down VNM's to try to get their hands on a very rare drop item--so rare it took a month for any info to show up on how to get it.

Case in point. I just started my Mandies trial for the final stage of Garuda's trial. I just spent merits to get Avatar Phys. ACC/ATT to 5/2 vs 3/2 when I did them last. I was also level 80 when I did them last time. Guess what the difference in my PC's were? 200-300 on average. What has changed to increase my damage? MERITS. Not magian, cruor, or crafted gear, not leveling and recapping skills--MERITS, and a lot of them.

Again, the issue isn't JUST the fact they increased perpetuation cost over the course of 5 levels. It is the fast that they increased it TWICE in those five levels---actually, with in THREE levels for most of them--and it was 3 freaking points for elementals. LOOK AT THE CHARTS:

Carby: 79, 80 All other avatars: 78, 80 ELEMENTALS: 77, 79, 80

Following the pattern of perpetuation rise over the last 75 levels, ther is really only ONE category that would likely have gotten a double bump. The pattern was on pace to be:

Carby: 81 Fenrir: 80 Diabolos/avatars: 77, 80 Elementals: 77, 82

The rub though, is that SMN has always had a fairly straightforward way to easily obtain -perp. gears to offset rises in perp. gears BEFORE they became a big problem. In this case, we got the jump in perp., doubled down for some, and are forced to offset it by doing a major grind for an item we can't equip to offset the rise until AFTER we get the penalty.

Compare these paths:

Carby mits at 20--farm a pop item, kill an NM, get your mits. Austere/penance/elemental staves--craft or buy on AH. Evoker's ring, kill avatars for whispers and get ring. YY Robe, get pop cycle for an NM and kill it.

I got my carby mitts in just a couple hours. Got my evoker's ring in just a few days. Got YY robes for me and 5 other people over 3 weeks. I bought my elemental staves on AH--first as NQ, then upgraded to HQ later for my BLM--already had them for SMN. Once I got my YY, I ditched my NQ body.

One can acquire more than double the -perp. gears in a fraction of the time it is taking just to get this additional -2 to offset the new increases. You can offset -5 perp. for ALL SUMMONS IN ONE WEEKEND--HQ staffs, evokers, YY robe. You would be hard pressed to get a staff to it's -2 stage for just ONE avatar/elemntal in the course of just one weekend--much less all the way to -5.

So, as you see, it's not just the additional tiers of perp. that got tacked on. You have to look at the bigger picture. The problem is the means they gave us to prepare and offset it. I is going to be over a month just to complet these things, blowing off xp parties, BCNM's, mission fights--I've been very focused on completing them. And I'm still not done with my first 6 staves (2 weren't even for SMN, but BLM), and seriously questioning if I want to start one for Leviathin at this point, even though I need him for some things we do on a regular basis....

And what is the only justification everyone tries to give for this? Avatars are more powerful? BOGUS. I sometimes have a hard time hitting 1500+ on xp'able mobs on SMN. I can do it to the same mobs with my eyes closed on BLM--and I don't have anything but AF, purchased gear, or R/E items from FOV chests, and two completed magian staves--no endgame/VNM/NM/BCNM/KSNM gears. Just a gimped 80 BLM who hasn't even completed merits yet--heck, I don't even have Stone/Water5 yet either, as they haven't dropped the few times I've been in abbysea. A galka PUP friend of mine can consistently hit 2k on them in one move without dropping a dime or any more time other than recapping magic at 80. And SMN is so powerful at 80 that it deserves to be penalized? Stop hating on SMN, please.

Raist

Edit: Here's another monkey wrench for the BLM comparison in the previous post. Out of curiosity while starting my fly trials for Ramuh's final stage, I thought I would compare my BLM to my SMN.

In my full SMN gear as always, with my -4 perp teiwaz for Ramuh. 80 SMN/WHM, Buffed up, rested to full. Meriph. Mtns. [s], No food, just Sigil (regen/refresh/food duration). Firesday, no weather, full moon. Called Ramuh, did not use Favor, put up shock spikes BP, enagaged a Dragonfly, Chaotic Strike and let him beat on the fly. It died just before BP timer was back up, and dismissed Ramuh. With refresh latent and such, it cost me a net of 475 MP, and I got 28 limit points.

Tele'd to allied nation, changed to BLM/WHM--DID NOT GRAB ANY GEAR. All I did was run into mog, change main job and run back out. I only had my SMN gear on me--wasn't even wearing a body piece or INT rings--best thing I had were my HQ elemental staves, was mostly mp gear. Same method...still firesday, no weather, full moon. Buffed up, rested to full, put up shock spikes. Blizz4, Fire4, Thunder4--dead fly and 28 limit points. With refresh latent and conserve mp kicking in, it cost me a net of 484 mp to cast 1 buff spell and three TIER 4's that averaged around 1k a shot.

Did roughly the same amount of damage, for the same amount of MP, over roughly the same amount of time (actually, I think faster on BLM)--while my BLM was HALF NAKED. Yeah.. SMN is REAL powerful and deserves to be nerfed as it levels......

So, as you see, it's not just the additional tiers of perp. that got tacked on. You have to look at the bigger picture. The problem is the means they gave us to prepare and offset it.

Did roughly the same amount of damage, for the same amount of MP, over roughly the same amount of time (actually, I think faster on BLM)--while my BLM was HALF NAKED. Yeah.. SMN is REAL powerful and deserves to be nerfed as it levels......

That's 20 right there. TWENTY. Do you need support to get it? Of course. Just like melee need support to be worth anything. Just like tanks need support to be worth anything. There's plenty of ways to 'offset it'. Now if you want to offset it in a pet burn or solo you are SOL. But that's been my whole point. You shouldn't just be able to gather 8 smns and have infinite perp because they could just kill anything without ever getting hit.

2) Totally different. The main difference being if you nuked Turul with 6 naked blms you would get one shotted. If you had 6 naked smns you would never get touched.

You missed the point of that test. A beefed up avatar was as efficient as a half-naked BLM at the same level on the same mob. Everyone keeps claiming avatars are so much more powerful because they leveled. They no longer scale anywhere near as much as the players do any more. It may have been so earlier on, but that was more because of gear and skill enhancements. We've reached a plateau in that arena, and they simply no longer increase at the same rate any more.

As for all those wonderful options for offsetting perpetuation--those are third-party options for the most part. Every mage is capable of putting on gear that gives refresh, and you are able to purchase refresh latents and buy drinks. The point is that SMN has limited options to offset it on their own. They have to be proactive about it. As stated in previous posts, they may have to sacrifice other potential plusses to offset this one minus.

For example, I have to swap my hands out for carby mitts to get a free carby and recover 1 mp refresh even with my Apollo's staff. I loose 5 skill to do that. I can not put on my carby mits and activate favour and have a free carby with no refresh until a refresh latent kicks in. Until I got my last merit in Skill, that was the only way to reach the top tier on Carby's favor--to not use carby mitts. So...until recently, I had to nerf my mp to grant a full favor to the front line (or just for myself if soloing) if I wanted to go that route. On top of that, favour nerf's avatar output and such, so it's not ideal.

We're not saying that perp. isn't manageable in one way or another, the problem is the way both the perp. increase and gear to offset it was managed in this update, coupled with what we got (or rather didn't get). How many times does this have to be plastered on the wall for it to sink in? Why does everyone keep going back to only the perp. issue and then ignore the gear issue? While they both may be important, they are just pieces of a much bigger problem.

At this point, we feel like we HAVE to have the gear to offset the accelerated penalty. We still do roughly the same damage against mobs with the same level gap at 80 as we did against mobs with the same level gap at 75--in some cases, it's even less damage. But, because the mobs take longer to kill, we have to keep avatars out longer at a higher cost. Even if a SMN is only calling avatars for BP's then releasing, they have to squeeze extra BP cycles out of their MP pool because the fights last longer. Either way, it's costing more mp because output simply has not scaled up equally. If we didn't get the extra penalty, we wouldn't feel so pressured to get the gear just so we can stand a chance at keeping up with everyone else.

Up until this point, perpetuation was finally getting into a more acceptable balance in general. It wasn't perfect for a small portion of the die hard anti-perpetuation people, but if you looked at it more objectively it wasn't too bad in most cases. But what they did with this update is slap everyone in the face by unbalancing the growth rate, tipping the scales suddenly and everyone had to scramble to try to pull it back. The only option was a ridiculous grind that is way out of proportion in comparison to other jobs.

This sudden acceleration has also created extra anxiety amongst summoners because of the history of the perpetuation patterns. Is this rate going to continue, or is it just a one time thing? What is to come? Even though they weren't a flat pattern of 1 point increase every 8 levels, each line did have a consistency to them of sorts, until we got to the big 70/75 BP's when they ramped up the avatar costs. Look at them more closely:

Carbuncle was almost always 9 levels--there was only ONE 8 level gap. 8 bumps in 72 levels, so you sort of expect a bump every 9 levels. Then there is suddenly a 7 level gap, followed immediately by another bump the next level--so that's 2 in 8 levels. Doubled up on us.

Fenrir wasn't as consistent, but 7 was the common gap--there was one 6 and an 8, but you could count on getting one increase for every 7 levels (10 bumps in 73 levels). What did they do this time? A bump in 5 levels, then again in 2. That's 2 points in 7 levels--doubled up on that one too.

Diabolos and Avatars were a wierd lot. They started out with a big 9 or 10 gap, then tightened up sharply--ramping up for the level 70 BP's. But they held that higher rate, presumably to counter the jump in output with the 70 BP's, as well as the potential output of fully meritted BP's. That's hard to swallow at first glance, but if you look at the bigger picture, it averages out to 1 bump every 7 or 8 levels (10 in 74 levels). What did they do? 2 in 6 levels. Granted, the trend at the time was 1 in 3 levels, but that was because we were given really powerful moves with the 70/75 BP's--something we did not get at this time.

There was nothing new for 6 avatars that had their cost increased. Only 3 moves--for dark and light (of which, only Diabolos is in this group) that are weaker in scale compared to the 75 BP's for the elemental avatars. They're more like ones they couldn't put in the 75 BP because they are light/dark based moves. Damage is mediocre unless you build TP (which hurts with more perp. cost), and since you can't get any TP bonus via merits like the 75 BP's--that's questionable efficiency.

Elementals have been the most consistent over all, even though their gaps changed a lot between 4-6. But, as a whole it was 16 bumps in 72 levels, an average of 4.5. So you could expect a bump once every 4 or 5 levels. Well...they did a 5 and a 3 which averages to a 4 level gap and is the ONLY one that has maintained consistency. And guess what? They got NOTHING new. No new spells...nada.

Which begs the questions: No new gamebreaking moves were added, yet the perp. cost jumped up as if there was? Why didn't the elementals jump up in thier pattern if nothing fantastic was added there, but everything else went crazy and all we got new was "meh" in comparison to the last time they did this?

So, to summarize the perpetuation side: In the past, we had some sudden increases in perpetuation, but at that same time, the avatars suddenly went on steroids with new moves that kind of soften the sting. This time, we got ramped up perpetuation costs--and a couple of meh moves that seemed more like an afterthought. It's nice to complete the line and give us something in the light/dark areas that were not available with the merit BP's. But, they don't scale well with TP like the merit BP's--they appear limited by the base magic formula, while merit BP's get the extra TP bonus factored in. So to use these to justify another spike in perpetuation isn't quite right.

In the end, what we wound up with was a sudden spike in cost that is not aligned with our increase in output. The ONLY way to rebalance that relationship is to make the staves. So, on to issues with the staves:

There are highly usable and sought after options for other jobs that require half the work of just ONE of these staffs. They aren't recovery items either--they are enhancing items. Also, most of those items can benefit more than one job. These really are only for SMN. So, those of us who want to be as efficient and versatile as we can in as many situations as possible (ie, not relying on always having someone to refresh us, or having to sub a job only to use it's refresh feature, or nerf ourselves and use favour)--we HAVE to do multiple lines and it is just too much of a time sink.

Why couldn't they have just made one staff with -perp for all avatars? Why did they have to split it up, and make as many as 8 pieces of staple gears virtually obsolete post 80 for mages, knowing we will want to hang onto the older ones for various reasons? That's another issue that's being ignored by the nay-sayers here--this is adding to the mog house clutter as well. I'm already nearly doubling my space requirement already for weapons for just 2 jobs. What if I needed the MACC staves as well for another job?

This could have and should have been managed in a much more efficient way. Don't double down on all the perp tiers for SMN and not give anything that justifies the increased cost. Instead of 24 magian staves, give us one staff that focuses more on MAB, one focusing more on MACC, and one on -perp for ALL avatars. Make them progress slower if they want--only to +3 affinity level (+1/+3 or -4 perp)at 80, then the +4 affinity stage (+1/+4 or -5 perp) at 85 if they were concerned about them being too overpowering and disrupting game balance. What they did is just send everything spiraling out of whack for the mage class with these trial lines, and the justifcation being used for SMN is the increased perp. which is not justified because avatars didn't suddenly get anything overpowering them like the 70/75 BP's that reshaped SMN's potential last time.

Now, if SMN IS being slated for something greater later on akin to what happened at 70/75--how about a freaking preview? We got all those great teasers at the first of the year about what was coming this summer, why not some more info again?

If their past treatment of SMN is any indication...we are just expecting more of the same old "meh" stuff. If they are planning to add more things like Holy Mist for each of the 6 remaining avatars, we may well be in for a severe disappointment.

All of these comparisons are silly. Especially to melee jobs. If you look at every other magic user, MP costs increase as level increases. Period.

Perpetuation is silly. You can't make comparisons to anything without making it sound the dumbest ever, because perpetuation on SMN is the dumbest ever.

I also love how you still think a summoned pet need higher MP costs, while a called pet like wyvern and puppet do not. Shouldn't we perhaps add 5 minutes to call wyvern just for balance reasons? It got much stronger with 5 levels I'm sure.

Interesting. Admittingly, this was before my time. I can say that summoner would be more powerful and useful if I had a ~23 second BP timer for Wind Blade. I think that the rage-ward separation was actually a nerf.

GerrardCapashen wrote:

Splitting the rages and wards, and then doubling the timers, just meant that we could rage only half as often.

GerrardCapashen wrote:

The ward and rage BP separation overall was hurtful to summoner. It was before my time, so I don't know if the summoner community suggested "split and have each timer be double of the current timer" or if that was SE's interpretation. If that was the suggestion, then the summoner base was truly retarded.

BP timers were never 23 seconds. I don't know where you picked up this "doubling the timer" thing but it never happened. Before the timers were split, it was a single 60-second timer for any BP. Now, it's two separate 60-second timers. How is that a nerf? I think you're confused.

GerrardCapashen wrote:

MP very much is a critical resource for summoner. MP is a very big limitation on my Wind Blade per hour rate. If I had infinite mp, you better believe that I would start outdamaging BLMs and SCHs on most mobs.

No, you wouldn't, because you're still limited to one Wind Blade every 45 seconds no matter how awesome your gear is and how much MP you have. BLM & SCH will always be able to do more damage than that.

Sure, there's the hate buildup issue, but most BLM & SCH are content to just die every so often for a free hate-reset in exchange for making the fight faster. This seems to be the attitude of most people in FFXI these days, and it pretty much eliminates our #1 advantage on the DD front.

Let's take a summoner who is meleeing with his pet, and not doing any BPs. In which case, the summoner gets stronger from more ability scores (str, dex, etc.) from leveling, and from level correction. Same for pet. I see the power curve as indistinguishable from a dragoon and his pet gaining power from leveling. (I'm 75, err 80, drg. I should know.) The dragoon pays no additional penalties for higher ability scores and for the better level correction. However, the summoner does pay more for this same simple benefit from leveling in the form of perpetuation.

Let's take a summoner who is doing summon -> BP -> release spam. In this case, the pet gets stronger from leveling due to higher ability scores (str, dex, etc.) and from a better level correction. The summoner has the choice to use magical BPs which cap out in damage, much like a BLM spell. He can choose the new tier for more damage for mp cost, or he can choose the old tier for the same damage for the same mp cost, except that the summoner's mp cost goes up across the board due to perp by about 4 to 8 mp from the 2 additional perp this upadte, depending. The summoner also has the choice to use physical BPs which act somewhat like a dragoon's weaponskill. As before, he can use the old one for the old power, or the new one for the new power, but either way the costs he pays is slightly more because of perp.

The perp is mostly irrelevant for summon -> BP -> release spam. In this regard, summoner behaves much like a blm. It's a relatively small cost compared to when the summoner keeps his pet out, like a dragoon or a puppetmaster would. In this regard, summoner gets the shaft. It's not like summoner is that good with its pet out. I never see people going crazy over summoner kites endgame, nor the lol damage from a summoner pet meleeing. Perp cost in this regard is just there to ghey summoner when soloing or lowmanning; it hurts a little bit in endgame but only rarely would a good summoner keep a pet out at endgame, avatar's favor or no avatar's favor. (Yes favor is that sh*tty. Double the strength of some of them or more (I'm looking at you Titan's Favor), and then maybe I'll consider using them.)

Wasn't the timer like 30 seconds way back in the day before the Rage Ward split? Presumably it would have gone done to about 23 seconds, aka half of 45, with current gear. Sorry if I'm mistaken.

It was 60, always was.

GerrardCapashen wrote:

but only rarely would a good summoner keep a pet out at endgame,

Hardly the case. Merit BP TP alone suffices for more than rarely. A good SMN will know how to guage the situation, when to keep and when to release.

Perpetuation is inconsequential at any given moment and not the given concern for most SMNs, but the bleeding mp adds up over the course of an extended event and is a constant stymie against effeciency. It's an annoyance (or insult) we could do without in lieu of the other struggles we deal with because it doesn't balance anything. It's just there.

____________________________

"And I'm prepared to passionately argue this point until nothing makes sense anymore. If that doesn't work, then the hours upon hours of whining will." -Red Mage Statscowski

So it starts with SMNs having a slight advantage which they should pay for (perpetuation). But it quickly becomes the SMN that is the underdog and really do not need to be paying for being worse.

I'd like to see a fixed 3 MP per tick perpetuation on all avatars, no gear to lower it. To get it free, find a refresher. To gain MP, find two. That would be a balanced system.

(And for the people trying to count max MP divided with 3 and come up with the duration of pets live increasing, please remember that you are also using MP on BPs which increase in cost. It is common to use up 1000 MP in 5 minutes if you try and use both Ward and Rage)

With that system there wouldn't be any magian staffs to complain about either.

- The maximum amount of MP drainable using the summoner ability "Elemental Siphon" will be increased.

Let's not wait and see. Avoid my advice. And ***** at me cause SE never listens. Well apparently SE is listening. Maybe you should try asking for stuff again while we have a new director.

Quote:

Show me anything in the history of SMN adjustments that would give us reason to trust it will be fixed anytime soon? We know for a fact they were concerned about it 4 years ago. We only have so many updates and so many levels for them to adjust the perp. increase rate back to something more reasonable.

Trends are a hard game, You can see them doing something but your not sure where it leads. Assuming when I brought up favors, twice, people assumed I said they were amazing. The truth was that I pointed out a trend of SE making attempts. People ignored everything else and started making assumptions instead of noticing I pointed out at a trend of recent additions. The trend of effort was pretty obvious; people can't just read into things and take it at face value.

The one thread I mentioned about favors that was truth as well, you avoided the matter entirely. You'd be lying to yourself that another topic of its sort was broached in a 'feedback and suggestion' thread. The thread was defaulted and no new suggestions were made. If the thread was defaulted why on earth would SE read a suggestion the people do not want? What makes you believe that they were reading your class threads when all they need is feedback and suggestions?

I also mentioned on multiple occasions that your perp would be readjusted by the time we were 99 or shortly after. Something that could also be seen from recent trends. I wasn't some kind of believer shouting **** on the streets all of it had reasoning.

yeah....they've been "trying" and failing (quite epically, I might add) since SPRING 2006.

SMN has been complaining for longer than that. And not just in the Feedback forum, and to say they only pay attention to this one forum is kinda lame. Why wouldn't they look into specific job forums if they are looking closely at a job? Or maybe Server Forums if there is a problem being reported on a particular server? or perhaps even the endgame section if there are problems being reported with endgame activities? Why wouldn't they use freely offered and fan generated resources for their research?

Unless you have a specific memo detailing exactly what they do follow, it's all merely speculation on your part--who's to say who is right and who is wrong. It's all opinion, and you know what they say an opinion is like...everyone has one, just not everyone wants to hear it.

The fact is, they JUST ANNOUNCED the new director on POL site SEPTEMBER 01, 2010. Up until that point, why wouldn't everyone expect business as usual.

Who knows, maybe (I know this may sound crazy) this adjustment came BECAUSE of all the clamoring about the problems with SMN over the past year. Notice that the perpetuation adjustment is ONLY for those POST 75. Coincidence? I think not. It is likely THE RECENT GRIPING about the last update that prompted this particular move, otherwise it would have been applied to previous levels as well.

You kept saying wait and see--well a large percentage of the community has been doing just that for the last 4 years (at least, since they announced they were looking into solutions in 2006)and haven't seen their issues addressed until now. Notice, some of those changes are long time complaints for SMN. But then, you'd probably have to have been following things more closely over the years to notice that....

Do you want us to have avatar magic comparable to a magic DD? Do you want avatars able to continuously keep up with melees? Do you want buff/enfeebling like a rdm/brd?

SMNs don't need to be "like" other jobs:

jlejeune wrote:

Like I said earlier, we have a counter-intuitive system of less for more. I, at least, don't think we necessarily need to be stronger than mainstay DDs or more potent support than BRD or COR. As a hybrid job, it makes more sense that we'd be less efficient at those roles than other jobs anyway, but we shouldn't have a higher cost associated with our damage or support if they're going to be weaker than the current jobs, something the other hybrid jobs (RDM, SCH, PUP, and to a lesser extend DRG) don't have forced upon them. I want us to be more time-effective or cost-effective, either way we'd be more apt to fill in the holes at events than we are now.

Ok, fine then. So shall we lower the costs to make filling multiple roles(albeit it not optimally) and in exchange then trade away our almost hate free abilities. I really do think part of the reason things are as they are is because unlike almost all other jobs who take the enmity upon themselves, we only gain a negligible amount?

No need to mess with SMN hate. Otherwise, you'll need to either reduce or eliminate perpetuation entirely while making it possible to heal avatars much like the other pet jobs can their own. Individual recast timers also demand some level of consideration when it comes to throwing avatars at harder mobs since only Garuda can Hastega, for example, in the off chance that's what you mainly need her for. Not to mention SMN is more fragile in comparison to the other jobs, with or without pets available.